Song for the Blue Ocean Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas

Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author's exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea's abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis. Carl Safinais the founder and director of the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society, an adjunct professor at Yale University, and a recipient of the Pew Charitable Trust's Scholar's Award in Conservation and the Environment.Eye of the Albatrossis his most recent book, which is also published by Henry Holt & Co. ANew York TimesNotable Book ALos Angeles TimesBest Nonfiction Selection ALibrary JournalBest Science Book Selection Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author's exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea's abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis. We observe people whose lives and occupations unfold in a drama of clashing personal histories and daily struggles for existence. We enter the embattled world of New England fisherman on the trail of overfished giant tuna; visit the Philippine Islamic separatists trying to protect their coral reefs; bear witness to the northwestern salmon rivers and estuaries degraded by deforestation; observe the fragile South Pacific reefs whose fishes and invertebrates are the prey of rapacious market hunters. Safina shows us how our exploitation of the ocean's resources is little different from the nineteenth-century plunder that destroyed the buffalo. But he also tells dramatic and hopeful stories of the sea's revival and replenishment. "Safina'sSongis theSilent Springfor our time . . . A heartbreaking requiem for the world's aquatic resources . . . a plaintive, sensitive, caring, intelligent, indignant paean to his beloved waters and their threatened inhabitants. His book will make you mad as hell; it will make you marvel at the wonders he describes (his descriptions of bluefin tuna, like the great fish themselves, are poetry), and it will make you glad there is someone like him to devote his life to the preservation of the Earth's most fragile and misunderstood ecosystems . . . It should be a clarion call for people who think that creatures of the depths (or the shallows) are safe from the voracious predations of fishermen. I loved this book, but I hated what it was about. It was like reading a brilliant description of Auschwitz or Hiroshima. It is a frightening, important book. Read it and weep."Richard Ellis,Los Angeles Times "[A] landmark book . . . passionate and enthralling . . . InSong for the Blue Ocean, his engrossing and illuminating journey to the world's marine killing grounds stirs up typhoon-sized waves of bad news for almost anyone fond of eating, catching or admiring fish, including sushi lovers, backyard swordfish barbecuers, sport fishermen hoping for more than sunburn and a beer hangover from a day's charter, scuba divers lacking the time or money to search out reefs that dynamite and cyanide have not yet turned into underwater Hiroshimas, independent commercial fishermen and travelers expecting fishing boats and fishermen in coastal villages instead of boutiques."Thurston Clarke,The New York Times Book Review "Song for the Blue Oceanmesmerizes readers with many such exciting accounts of Safina's adventures while examining the ecological and social consequences of three controversial ocean fisheries. On his way to the inescapable conclusion that many fisheries have been over-harvested and poorly managed,

Carl Safina is the founder and director of the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society, an adjunct professor at Yale University, and a recipient of the Pew Charitable Trust's Scholar's Award in Conservation and the Environment. Eye of the Albatross is his most recent book, which is also published by Henry Holt & Co.